1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an imaging apparatus, and, more particularly, to an interface device for print mode selection in an imaging apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
An imaging apparatus includes a print engine for forming an image on a print medium, such as a sheet of paper. Such a print engine may be, for example, an ink jet print engine or an electrophotographic (EP) print engine. An ink jet print engine may include a reciprocating ink jet printhead carrier that forms an image on a print medium, such as a sheet of paper, transparency or fabric, by selectively ejecting ink from one or more ink jet printheads onto the print medium. An EP print engine may form a latent image on an intermediate substrate, such as a photoconductive drum, which in turn is developed with dry or liquid toner, and then the developed image is transferred to the print medium.
An imaging apparatus typically facilitates printing in a plurality of selectable print modes. Changes in print mode will often affect both printing quality and printing speed, e.g., throughput. For example, improvements in the printing quality of an ink jet printer are commonly realized in print modes providing better, best and photo quality by employing a technique commonly referred to as shingling, or interlaced printing, wherein consecutive printing swaths are made to overlap and only a portion of the ink drops for a given print line, i.e., raster, are applied to the print medium on a given pass of the printhead. In typical shingling methods, however, as printing quality increases, so does the number of passes of the printhead required to print the image data for a given raster, and thus the printing speed, in terms of printer throughput, typically decreases as printing quality increases.
In order for the user to select a print mode for printing an image, a user typically must navigate through a plurality of display screen prompts within their application and/or the printer driver in order to get to the proper screen to effect the selection. Also, sometimes a user may be confused as to how a particular change, for example a change affecting printing quality, will influence printing speed, in terms of throughput.
What is needed in the art is a simple to use and intuitive interface device for mode selection in an imaging apparatus.